Hi, when I export UFO files, all composites get the anchors of their base glyphs: e.g. if /E has a top anchor, /Edieresis will have a top anchor too in the UFO.
Is there a reason behind it?
I also noticed it a few months ago, and it’s really annoying…
That is triggered by the “Decompose Smart stuff” option. The idea is that with this option set, when generating fonts from those .ufo, you get as close of a result as when exporting from Glyphs. And the default .ufo pipeline doesn’t decompose anchors.
I see. But it’s not exactly smart stuff, no? Would a separate check box make sense?
That “smart” means “everything that isn’t supported by the ufo pipeline”. So you have the choices: Do I like to round trip as clean as possible (disable the checkbox), or do I like to export the font (e.g. with fontmake) and have it as close to what glyphs would do (check the box).
I asked if there’s a reason, and this is one. Thank you!
(still it’s a bit annoying, e.g. when you create UFOs for ikern and want to make a Glyphs file out of them again. Especially if there actually have been composites with anchors before)
For kerning, you could just import the kerning data without having to convert the UFO files back to .glyphs files.
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In this case, export the .ufo without the checkboxes checked.
And then only import the kerning/classes from the ufo as Florian suggested (File > Import > Metrics…).
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